An early, unfinished copy of the new Wolverine movie has apparently been making the rounds of the Internet, downloaded by many…including a Fox News columnist who wrote and released a review of it. He was promptly fired for "promoting piracy," which makes sense. He might also have been faulted for reviewing an unfinished, unreleased work…which is unethical even if you come by a copy honestly.
I don't altogether understand the mania of those who can't wait for a movie, who have to have it a few weeks early even if it means going to all sorts of trouble to obtain a bad or incomplete copy. I can't think of a single movie that would ever prompt that yearning in me. Matter of fact, it's quite the opposite. If I care at all about the project, I want to wait until I can experience it in its proper form and presentation.
When Monty Python's Life of Brian came out, a friend who worked on the advertising campaign gave me an advance copy — on 3/4" video cassettes, which I could play since I had a machine that played those. He didn't, which is why he gave them to me. Some friends came over and we brought in pizza and made an evening of it…watching a copy that was a little too dark on the TV I owned then, which had a 19" screen. We enjoyed the film but did no backflips. That was not the way to see it, I later realized. The advance copy was also missing a few scenes that were in the final release and must have included some that weren't, since it was around ten minutes longer.
A month later, I realized what I just said I realized. It was the weekend Life of Brian was formally released and I took a date to see it at a theater in Westwood. That was the way to see that movie. I loved it but felt sure I would have loved it even more had the advance copy not diminished many of the best moments for me. In hindsight, there was a childish feeling of privilege because we got to see the movie before anyone else we knew…and it wasn't worth it.
Obviously, there's a legal wrong in bootlegging material like this…in spreading or even just receiving stolen goods. There's also the downside for the audience in having the film spoiled a little or a lot. And there's one other thing: It's just unfair to the filmmakers. They offer their work for public consumption and once they release a movie, it's fair game for everyone to review it and say it's great or that it sucks moose or whatever. But before they release it, it's theirs in that sense. It ain't finished. It's like sneaking a peek at a novelist's working draft before he's ready to show it to anyone. I don't particularly want to see anything until the person creating it declares it's done, or at least until they decide it's far enough along to invite public inspection. It's not good for me as a consumer and it's not good for those who create what I consume.